Kyungsoo starts the day with sun in his irises, patting off sand on his bedsheet, walking on the streets and stopping at the crossroad. He watches a feather stirred up by a naughty gust, carried away, white and soft like snow, silky like a fresh bud, slightly black at the tip, untainted by dirt. Until it’s flying out of Kyungsoo’s sight, his heart a bit shaken, he continues his journey. Not for us, we’ll follow the feather. There it is! Rolling with the slightest turbulence, suddenly puffing so high then plummeting down. The wind changes so it is stuck on the window panel. We be Ghosting in the trees, while a voice screeches.

‘Why is there sand on the floor?’

‘Sand?’

‘And a shell too!’

A silence follows, the wind stills, the voices hold their breath. 

‘Could it be from the garden?’

‘Are you stupid? Do you even leave your lab? Mud is brown, but sand is golden.’

‘Golden? Could it be dirt?’

‘I said golden, not grey nor black.’

While they are searching for further clues, a withered flower lay on the table, basking in innocent kisses from Apollo. Kyungsoo has been clever, leaving no written document about his safe heaven, nor palpable evidence. But his parents’ are tired, nerves heightened while mulling over bills, clinging dear to their job, and fighting to perform better, better than their past records, than their peer’s present records, they are drained out. They mistook the faint thunderclaps at night as their son’s irrational outbursts, deemed his trip to grocery too long, his sad face as a prevailment of insanity. Tumbling over the plates on the table, they clutch the phone and ring up their beloved psychiatrist. 

‘How about tomorrow?’

‘Yes, yes, thank you. How much?’

Their faces pale at the cost, ‘Payment made by tonight?’

Another deadly silence follows, the dead twitches in their graves, laughing at their burdened bodies, working so hard to stay rosy and plum. Shall sobs erupt as she holds her son’s shirt close, dad scoffs her weak trembling firgure, telling her to spare her tears, when his head is heavy with dews. Traces of sand whitened as water evaporates. Troubles appear in form of sweat, tears and, sometimes, seawater. Dad’s ‘causation’ mind travels from lab to Kyungsoo’s room, blaming it on the school, the government, fantasying agents poisoning his water, with bills foaming white, and engulfs by the sea of thoughts. Two fanatic human cease at the sight of the withered flower, white browning at the edges. Nobody dares to touch it, not even a zephyr, quietly the flower stares. The room is purified in the halo of the withered, every object tells a soft tale of their beloved son. What to do? Who to trust? With their head in the cloudy atmosphere, disturbed by radio waves and bombarded by cosmic rays, they surrender to work, bury themselves in the bustling of elbows and jumps into the arresting chains of work.

‘Kyungsoo-ah! Kyungsoo-ah!’ Chanyeol coos next to Kyungsoo who is concentrated on his problems. ‘Listen to our performance, please!’ 

Pushing up his glasses, with narrowed eyes and a punch to Chanyeol, who dodged. Kyungsoo compromises, ‘I was working, wasn’t I? But, you got lucky this time.’

‘Just once I promise. We’ve worked hard on this!’ Chanyeol blabbered in the corridor leading to the music room, then whispered. ‘By the way, you are helping me with math afterschool right?’

Throwing the sandwich bag into the bin, Kyungsoo smiles, ‘Of course! If you don’t ditch me.’

‘No one would ever want to make our pretty boy sad,’ Before Chanyeol could utter another cliche, They arrived at the music room.When they get settled and warm up, the duo sings a song composed by Chanyeol, with poetry collected by Kyungsoo, from Jongdae’s sweet talk with the sea, when he was dreamy and lulled to soft murmurs of the clouds. 

‘Hello, angel

Is your love for me perpetual 

As The lullaby of the stars, 

wise and blind,

You blink upon us, when river 

rustles by, Rustling your lovely hair

dazzled and Blind

By your ever softening glow.

The clouds are apart

Shall they ever touch the land

Rupture! In their caresses

And angel cries in muffled silence

When I look up at the sky

Cruel cruel Moon!

Why unveil your face in grimace!

Thus doves never nest in your embraces

With thy  cold, cold shards of silver.’

Free Flowing melody with Wendy’s aloof vocals, sudden plucking of the guitar replaced the legato piano, and the unveiling the bass, and the song falls into a bare undertone. And ends abruptly at two minute mark (Kyungsoo checks with the stopwatch) breathing shallowly, in order not to disrupt the song, when it ends however, Kyungsoo hears the pulsating drum in his chest. With tears entrapped, Kyungsoo cheers with a blinding smile.

‘Encore!’ Kyungsoo chants, Wendy blushes while Chanyeol shreds his guitar to create celebratory noises, they start with a simple melody, inviting Kyungsoo to join. The trio, then, sings enchanting tunes, Kyungsoo’s soulful calls with Chanyeol husky accompaniment, and Wendy’s bell-like response, together sewing a wilderness full of mystery. The bell will have to go, and they will have to split up for their next classes. Pray they shall leave with echos in their ears. 

When the school ends, Kyungsoo and Chanyeol stays in a classroom. Setting a goal, and working towards it. Kyungsoo is relieved to find that Chanyeol understands most of the concept, but like a sword without polishing, it rusts. Kyungsoo prepared exercises for Chanyeol to work on, and hard problems for himself to chew on. Sometimes Kyungsoo would invite Chanyeol to join in the thinking, Chanyeol would belittle himself with excuses of ‘ at math’. Kyungsoo would have none of these and forces Chanyeol to do it. They would talk of possibilities